


What One Sees

by deebainwonderland



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Blind Character, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, High School, Hurt/Comfort, Lance (Voltron) Angst, M/M, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22988854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deebainwonderland/pseuds/deebainwonderland
Summary: They were a unit of six. Six beautiful, messed up teenagers with a loyalty that could test any storm....Their easy rhythm vanished with the light in Lance’s eyes.
Relationships: Allura & Lance (Voltron), Hunk & Lance (Voltron), Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron), Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt, Lance & Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 155





	What One Sees

Lance and Keith were not the most conventional of friends. In fact, they made no fucking sense whatsoever. People would raise their eyebrows at the strange duo, whispers cupped behind their hands.

Keith didn’t care. Lance was the only person he’d ever known who hadn’t treated “orphan” as a distinguishing label. He’d simply rolled his eyes and told the other boy that even that was no excuse for being an asshole. 

Keith was hooked immediately. 

The others gravitated their way quickly. Pidge was too smart for her own good - and people were always all too happy to remind her of that fact. Hunk shied away from, well, everything, but had a wicked sense of humor and a brain to match. 

Shiro had too much responsibility. It weighed upon his shoulders like a boulder, and he sought out their group as an escape. Taking care of them was the only responsibility he decided to take up all on his own. 

Allura was her own exception to just about every rule dreamed up by smaller minds. Beautiful and charismatic, everyone at their school fell over themselves to be her friend. With a temper to match her intellect, Allura found their group to be the only one that could keep up. 

They were a unit of six. Six beautiful, messed up teenagers with a loyalty that could test any storm. 

.

.

.

Their easy rhythm vanished with the light in Lance’s eyes. 

\---

It started on a day like any other. Keith would later think back on the normalcy of it all and want to crush something, anything, with his bare, bleeding hands. 

They’d spent their lunch hour as they did every day. The six of them, curled in a loose circle under the evergreen tree on the edge of campus. No teachers to huff at their language, no other teens trying to guide them into frivolous gossip. The group’s lunchtime was a sanctuary. 

Keith groaned as the dull thrumming bell broke through the quiet air. “Back to our doom we go,” he said dryly, reaching down to pull Pidge to her feet. 

“Statistically speaking, with the amount of time we spent on this campus, the chances of us reaching our demise here are actually rather high,” Pidge said brightly, hand shoving her glasses back up her nose. 

“Thank you, Pidge, for that ringing assessment,” Hunk groaned, hand ever-present over his sizable stomach. 

Lance laughed, bouncing to his own feet. For a split second, he stood frozen, almost comically, one hand grasped out in front of him. “Woah.”

Keith’s attention swung to Lance instantly. With that one confused word from his best friend, alarm shot through Keith's system, leaving the boy buzzing. “Lance? What’s wrong?” 

Carefully, much more carefully than he should have needed to, Lance crossed his feet and sank back to the ground.

“Who turned off the sunlight?”

\--

Advanced degradation. 

Irreversible. Permanent.

_ Blindness.  _

Lance sat on the floor of his bedroom in silence. An unusual state, to say the least.

Shiro was crouched by his side, one steady hand firmly grasping his shoulder. 

Or not so steady, Keith noted dully. The hand was shaking.

“Is there no treatment?” the oldest boy asked gently, speaking as he would to a cornered animal. 

Lance’s laugh didn’t sound anything like him. The noise bounced dangerously around Keith’s cavernous head. “Transplant is an option, but the doctors said finding a match is extremely unlikely.”

Lance lifted his head and took in the devastated faces surrounding him. He tried for a grin, so wide that it hurt his teeth. “Come one, guys, you look like I just told you I have a month to live. I’ll be fine.” 

The last part came out sounding more like a question.

“You will be fine.”

That was Allura in a nutshell. Calm, poised, and ready to bend the very world to her will. “We’ll be by your side every step of the way. You won’t have to go through this alone, Lance.” 

“Seconded,” Hunk grunted, trying to wipe away the tears that were falling in steady streams down his cheeks. “We’ll be here man, don’t even worry about that.”

Pidge nodded her agreement, eyes shining behind the round lenses. 

Silence once again permeated the room. Keith felt the caress of Lance’s gaze swing his way but remained stubbornly staring at the floor.

His own eyes were dry. 

They burned. 

“Keith?” Lance’s voice was painfully hesitant. 

Keith attempted to speak, choked, coughed and fell silent. For a long moment, his eyes remained trained on the floor. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run away. He wanted to reverse time to the day before when Lance had been smiling, laughing, and fucking perfect. 

But how could he? How could Keith turn his back on the one person who never turned his back on him?

Steeling himself, Keith looked up, meeting wide, frightened blue eyes. “We’ll fix this, Lance. Together. Just try getting rid of us.”

_ Of me _ . 

His words were greeted with a smile. Keith tried not to notice how it wobbled. 

\--

For a few weeks, the world kept turning as it always had. Keith personally felt as though the world should be leaching color after the news that had rocked their world. He was considerably pissed off when everything seemed so damned unaffected.

Lance didn’t speak much about his diagnosis. He seemed utterly determined to make the most out of his last moments of sight. Keith caught him more than once staring at one of their friends with unnerving intensity, as though trying to memorize their features. 

The group took him everywhere. They were all drunk off the previously unseen beauty of everything around them.

Has the sky always been that blue? How exactly did Allura get her hair that perfect shade of ice? 

“It’s autumn, Lance! Let’s go look at all the changing trees in the park.” 

“Lance, let’s go down to the water. I bet there are a lot of boats out today.”

“The zoo! It’s been ages since we all went there.” 

Keith tried not to think about the hunger with which Lance’s eyes devoured the changing scenery around him. He’d stare at a leaf as though he’d never seen anything like it in his entire life, and Keith would have to physically force down the bile rising in his throat. 

Then the day came, as they all knew it would. It was like someone flicked a light switch off in Lance’s brain. Eyes that once could see, saw no more.

The six of them lay curled into a bundle of limbs on Lance’s childhood bedroom floor. Lance lay sprawled in Shiro’s lap, unseeing eyes staring off into nothing at all.

Shiro was crying. Tears trailed down his cheeks in a silent stream as he gently carded his fingers through the boy’s unruly locks. 

Allura cried by their side. Unlike Shiro, she could not hide the soft gasps of her grief. Her nails bit angrily into her palms, drawing a drop of blood that ran slowly down one wrist. 

Hunk and Pidge talked in hushed, quick voices in the corner. No doubt they were already devising a myriad of plans to help Lance through the transition. 

Pidge’s eyes flashed with characteristic determination. Keith was thankful for that. At least someone was being productive and thinking about the future. At least they weren’t being so damn useless. 

Keith had never felt so powerless in his life. Not even when his dad died, and he stood by his grave, knowing he was truly alone. Not even that was worse than this moment right here.

He wanted to scream and cry and destroy the room around him with a baseball bat. He wanted to smash that mirror across the room for having the sheer audacity to reflect the sorrow it saw. 

But Lance was reaching for him. A tan hand stretched out from the safety of Shiro’s hold to strain at him, fingers grasping in little “come here” movements. Keith wasn’t sure how Lance knew where he was or if his reach was simply an open invitation to anyone near enough to take it.

Still, it didn’t really matter. Lance was reaching out, and Keith would rather eat nails then leave his best friend hanging. 

Lance smiled as their fingers intertwined. 

\--

Hunk was the most patient. It was he who came barreling in during the second week of post-Lance’s eyesight and dropped a thick book unceremoniously in his lap. 

“Ah!” Lance cried out, arms flailing at his sides. “What the hell?”

“Sorry!” Hunk said, not sounding terribly sorry at all. “It’s Braille! So you can still read and everything.” 

A knot pinched above Lance’s left eye. Though he was trying to appear strong, the boy was clearly still constantly a hair’s breadth away from completely losing track of his emotions. “Because I have long been a dedicated proponent of the literary arts.” 

“Exactly!” Hunk proclaimed, reaching over to gently open the book. “I’ve been studying for weeks so I think I’ve got a good handle on it.” 

Lance quirked an eyebrow at his friend before breaking into a soft smile. “You’ve been studying Braille?”

“Well, yeah,” Hunk said, scuffing a foot on the floor. “Ever since we, you know, found out what was going to happen. Figured it was best to be prepared.” 

Hunk’s embarrassment filled the air for a moment. The whole situation was still all new to them. His friends are never quite sure how to act, what to say, what toed the line and what went straight over it. 

“Well?” Lance asked with a grin that almost looked as bright as it had when he could see. “Aren’t you going to begin lesson one, Professor Hunk?”

Hunk laughed, worry evaporating as he plopped down. “Ok, so this is where it all starts…”

\--

It’s Shiro who was with him when disaster nearly struck. His sight had only fled a few weeks earlier, and Lance was tentatively braving the wide world once again. Well, his wide neighborhood anyway. Baby steps. 

Shiro was at his side, a calming force in the torrential overflow of information swirling around Lance. The older boy has one of Lance’s hands firmly in his grip and he leaned in close every few moments to whisper little details in his ear.  _ The sidewalk is plenty wide, don’t worry about that. There’s a bump a few steps ahead of us, take it slow, Lance.  _

Lance flinched closer to his protector every time an unexpected noise permeated the air. It was all so much, too much. How had he never noticed how excruciatingly loud everything was?

He kept a death grip on Shiro’s hand, trying to focus on the calluses beneath his fingers. His friend's gentle voice was the only thing keeping Lance from outright bolting.

One moment everything was fine. Well, not fine exactly, Lance still couldn’t fucking see, but it was manageable at least. It was difficult to feel overwhelmed next to the intrinsic steadiness that was Shiro. 

Then Lance was hit. Something struck him hard in the hip, wrenching his whole body around. A large dog? A kid on a skateboard? 

It didn’t matter. Lance hit the ground hard, gasping as pain laced up his arms. Something slammed down next to his hand (a footstep?) and the panic welling up inside him overflowed. 

Lance darted forward, still on his hands and knees. Away, away, he needed to be away, back to a place without the commotion, back to a place that was  _ quiet _ \- 

A body slammed him to the ground. Lance gasped in pain as he felt the warm stickiness of blood begin to run down from his nose. He took in a great mouthful of it as he struggled and gagged on the terrible metallic taste.

“Lance! Lance, it’s ok, it’s me!”

He knew that voice. That voice meant safety. It had for years. 

“Shiro?” Lance gasped, body going limp. “What…”

The weight on his back lifted and strong arms hooked underneath the boy’s armpits, hauling him to his feet.

“Shit!” the devastation was practically ringing in the other boy’s voice. “Lance, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

A desperate hand cupped Lance’s chin tilting it back as another pinched his bleeding nose. “You… you were moving towards the street. The cars were coming. I had to stop you.”

His voice was pleading, desperate to make the boy understand. 

“It’s ok,” Lance replied, somewhat dazedly. There was still so much noise, he couldn’t focus. He reached an arm out until it hit Shiro’s broad chest.

It took Lance an embarrassingly long moment to figure out why the other boy was shaking too. 

“You’re crying,” Lance said, amazed. In all the years he had known Shirogane Takashi, he had never seen the young man cry. Shiro had always been the steadfast pillar of strength. 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro said again, the tears now prominent in his cracked voice. He pulled Lance closer. “I’m so sorry. Let’s go home.”

Lance allowed himself to be led, Shiro’s arm now firmly settled along the small of his back. The arm continued to shake, and they walked painstakingly slowly. 

Next to the pair, a car horn blared.

Lance flinched away. 

\--

Pidge was a problem solver. Attacking a problem with an unwise sense of enthusiasm was just how she rolled. 

Which was what made this whole situation so unbearable. Pidge wasn’t an optometrist, she wasn’t a doctor of any kind. The field of medicine had never crossed her fancy, what will all her mechanical and astronomical pursuits. 

Pidge wished she’d paid more attention in health class.

Still, there were little things that the Brainiac (Lance’s word, not hers) could do. 

She could take measurements of Lance’s entire house and determine how many footsteps it would take for him to navigate. So she did.

She could track down audiobooks of Lance’s favorite novels and download them into a personalized smartphone. So she did.

She could rig every device she could think of in Lance’s house to be remotely activated by voice commands. So she did. 

She could hold Lance’s hand during his doctor’s appointment. 

So she did.

It was usually Allura and Shiro that accompanied Lance on these numerous visits, but they’d both had prior engagements that Lance had insisted they attend to. 

“Pidge will go with me!” he’d said brightly, waving a hand out in Pidge’s direction until she gently took it. “Won’t you, Einstein?” 

Of course, she’d said yes. Pidge was finding it increasingly difficult to refuse Lance anything. 

She  _ hated _ it when the only thing Lance could do was stare blankly at a wall, pain making his face pinched.

“Any pain? Anything unusual?” 

The doctor’s words snapped Pidge back to the present. Lance leaned back on the table, hands clenched at his sides. With a sigh, he tilted his head back to stare sightlessly at the ceiling. 

“Well, my eyes don’t work, is the thing.” 

The doctor laughed indulgently. “Anything else?” 

Lance smiled, and Pidge’s heart lifted immediately. 

“Nah,” Lance said, reaching out his hand which Pudge gladly took. “Got everything I need to get by right here.” 

\---

Allura was a prideful creature. Not vain or arrogant, mind you, simply proud of herself and the life she was creating. 

The other popular girls at the school didn’t understand her. She could have been their queen bee but instead, she hung out with the ragtag group of outsiders. 

Allura never cared about that. Pidge was the smartest person she’d ever met, Hunk the kindest, Shiro the strongest, and Keith the most determined. 

And Lance made her laugh like no other.

“It’s alright, Lance,” she said softly, hand rubbing gently up and down the boy’s curled back as he heaved over the toilet. “Let it all out. It’s ok.”

Lance moaned under her fingers, his own hands nearly white from gripping the sides of the toilet. He heaved again, shuddering as bile crawled up his throat.

“Alright,” Allura murmured, hand dipping into the boy’s sweaty locks. “I think you’re just having more vertigo. It’ll pass.” 

A dry laugh greeted her words, and Lance turned his head to the side to glace sightlessly up at her. “You really don’t need to stay here for this, Allura. Total grossville.”

“I don’t mind,” Allura replied sternly. “And if you think I am going to leave you to throw up your guts alone, you’ve got another thing coming, buddy.” 

If only the girls from school could see her now. They likely would have scurried from the bathroom screaming the moment the first mouthful of bile came up.

Stupid, silly children they were. They didn’t understand anything, not really. Friendship wasn’t about just enjoying the good days together. It was about weathering the storms that would enviably roll across the horizon. 

Allura remembered one night when she’d called Lance in a panic at 2am because she’d had a nightmare she failed the test she’d been studying for all week. Lance hadn’t laughed at Allura, he knew just how much the little things mattered to her. He’d stayed on the phone for nearly an hour, calm voice gently stripping away Allura’s fears.

The next morning, he’d shown up in front of her house before school with a cup of her favorite coffee and dark bags under his eyes. 

Allura knew who held her prideful heart. 

\--

Keith became Lance’s new eyes.

It wasn’t ideal. Keith wasn’t exactly a talkative guy and never cared much about the little details. When Lance would ask him to describe the sky, he would struggle to come up with enough descriptors. When Lance wanted to know about the details of Allura’s dress, Keith would surreptitiously pull out his phone to look up what a hemline was. 

Still, it was Keith who was the constant by Lance’s side. 

In the ensuing weeks after Lance completely lost his vision, Keith found himself nearly manic in his need to be next to the blinded boy.

A thousand horrifying scenarios played in a loop in his head. Lance falling into the street. Some idiot taking advantage to steal his wallet. Lance, scared, alone, crying... 

If something happened to Lance when Keith wasn’t there to stop it, he would never forgive himself. 

So he did the only logical thing he could think of. 

“You know, it's like having another shadow,” Lance said brightly, arm tucked into the crook of Keith’s elbow. “A brooding, mullet-haired, sarcastic shadow.” 

Keith didn’t bother replying, too focused on watching Lance’s feet walk carefully over the uneven path. 

“Seriously man, you know I can actually operate somewhat independently? Last night, I made it all the way to my downstairs bathroom without running into a single wall!”

“Just don’t want you to fall,” Keith gritted out. He was always so jumpy when he took Lance out alone. It seemed like every little thing was a potential danger. 

A warm hand cupped the side of Keith’s neck. He looked up into the sightless eyes and gentle smile.

“Let’s find a place to sit,” Lance said softly. Keith’s eyes trailed across the lines of his face. “It feels like it's a beautiful day.” 

The spring flowers were in full bloom around the pair. The sun was out, the air pleasantly warm. Across the park, a group of middle schoolers was playing an impromptu game of ultimate frisbee. 

Keith wasn’t looking at any of that. 

“It is a beautiful day.” 

The two settled down on the slightly damp earth underneath a great pine tree. The branches above cast shadows down on them that Lance could no longer see. Keith studied them in his place, noting how the threads of sunlight breaking through the pines lit up Lance’s hair.

Lance’s hand inched towards him against the ground. It strayed slightly to the left and Keith silently moved his hand over so their fingers knocked together. 

Lance heaved a shuddering breath and tried to smile. “Sorry. Sometimes I get nervous when I can’t feel the person next to me. Like they could just get up and walk away and I’d never know.”

Keith stared down at their conjoined hands, gently brushing his thumb in a soft circle against the other boy’s skin. “I’d never leave you like that.” 

“I know.” Lance’s voice was so gentle it sort of made Keith want to cry. 

“Are you afraid?”

Lance tilted his head in the direction of Keith’s voice, the lines in his forehead wrinkling. “Afraid of what?” 

Keith shrugged, before remembering that was now a useless gesture. “Anything really.” 

Lance seemed to consider the question carefully. Keith had always enjoyed watching Lance’s face as thoughts swirled around his head. His tongue would poke out slightly between his lips, and his total concentration would make butterflies explode in Keith’s stomach. 

“Kiss me.”

Keith jerked his hand back with an undignified squeak. “What?”

Turning his face towards his companion, Lance seemed amused by the reaction. Still, there was a pinching around his mouth that made Keith suddenly very, very aware that this was really happening. 

The moment the two had been dancing around for, well, years, was finally here. Keith felt laughably, absurdly, unprepared. 

“I wasn’t afraid,” Lance said gently. “I wasn’t afraid because I’m with you. I can never be afraid around you. Except now I am because I just asked you to do something that I’ve been wanting to ask you to do for years and I have absolutely no way to read your face. I could always take one look at you and know exactly what was happening in the messy mind of yours. Only, now I can’t. So I have to wait.” 

Lance heaved a breath, fingers curling in the grass. “Which makes me afraid.” 

Keith lurched forward. His hands clasped his best friend’s shoulders, gently turning the boy toward him. Tears were gathering in the corners of the sightless eyes. 

“Don’t you ever be afraid of me,” Keith whispered. This one single moment felt like the biggest of his life. He was not going to screw it up.

“Ask me again.” 

Lance dashed a hand against his wet eyes. “What?” 

“Be brave, Lance,” Keith begged softly. “I can be a bit of an idiot sometimes. But I’ll do it right this time, I swear. Ask me again.”

Slowly, Lance’s aching beautiful smile bloomed across his face once more. “Kiss me, Keith. Don’t be a moron.” 

So Keith did.

He indeed would have been a fool not too.

\--

Maybe one day Lance would get the call that always had the group jumping for their phones at every unknown number. Perhaps they would find a transplant for him, and Lance would one day be able to open his eyes to take in the beautiful, messed-up world.

Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it would never come. Perhaps Lance would be trapped in the darkness for the rest of his days.

Keith tried not to think about it too much. He tucked the flame of hope deep within his heart, well-tended, but contained. 

In the end, perhaps it didn’t matter all that much.

Lance was still Lance. He grew more accustomed to his condition each day. He’d begun to laugh more, just like he had before that fateful day on the school grounds. 

Keith loved him. He hadn’t told Lance yet, but he suspected the cheerful boy already knew. Lance never needed his eyes to be able to read his boyfriend like an open book. 

Keith loved him, they all did in their own ways. That fact would never change, no matter what the future threw at the group.

“You ok?” The soft voice came from next to Keith, and he tightened his hold on the hand in his. 

Lance was turned towards him. His milky eyes were focused on a spot a few inches to the left of Keith’s eyes. That didn’t matter. The smile was still the same. 

“I’m good. You?”

Lance titled his head to one side, listening to the distinct voices of their friends walking a few paces in front of the pair. A gentle breeze lifted his hair, twirling it around his head. The sun shone down, bathing the world in ethereal light. 

As Keith watched the boy next to him ponder his answer, his breath caught. Lance, there in the sunlight, was the most beautiful sight Keith had ever witnessed. 

“Yeah,” Lance decided, hand squeezing back against Keith’s own. “I’m perfect.”

_ You really are. _

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I am not a medical professional and the details of Lance's blindness may be inaccurate. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading! This is my first time writing in this fandom, but I have long enjoyed its lovely community. Please leave a comment and/or kudo if you enjoyed!


End file.
